KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It was needed and I think by most accounts welcome. Rain deficits have been increasing more and more, but today will be the first 1 inch of rain in a calendar day up at KCI at least since late June. It’s been a hot minute. The rain isn’t producing any significant flooding. There isn’t any severe weather with it. It’s just a good heavy rain for many areas.
It will start to fade away after lunch and we should be in better shape tomorrow. The other piece of good news is that the temperatures will remain below average… so no more 90s coming for awhile.
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Kansas City Forecast:
Today: Rain with some rumbles of thunder. The rain will start breaking up during the afternoon. Temperatures will remain cool all day with highs only in the 60s to near 70 degrees this afternoon. The winds will add to the coolness today as well.
Tonight: Variable clouds with some fog possible by daybreak. Lows near 60 degrees.
Tomorrow: Partly cloudy and pleasant. Highs in the lower 80s.
Thursday: About the same with highs in the lower-to-mid-80s.
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Discussion:
It took a while, but eventually rain and storms moved down from Nebraska and now we’re sort of nicely in it.
KCI through 8 a.m. has had 1.08 inches of rain. Some more is on the way, although the heaviest rain amounts will be winding down shortly.
Just what the doctor ordered for the yards at least. Some rain totals into 8 a.m.:
Here is a look at radar this morning:
You can see the heaviest shifting away as I start this blog.
Here are some other totals via Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network:
An impressive rain total map(s) for sure.
As a matter of fact this will go into the top 10 of best precipitation events of the year (at least for one calendar day).
If we want to look at the same data but take into account the spillover from 1-2 days which happens frequently (precipitation starts one day and ends the next), we come up with this.
The bottom line: the grass is a lot happier now than yesterday.
The morning weather map shows the heat has been shoved towards the south of the area, below that front in Oklahoma and Texas.
We’re firmly in the rain-cooled air and it will be a struggle to warm up today to any extent really.
We may not really clear out much overnight, so temperatures may not drop off until morning as skies start to break up a bit. Fog may also form in the morning as well tomorrow.
After the rain today, the next chance of something may be on Thursday night into Friday morning. It doesn’t appear to be a significant rain and should be somewhat more inconsistent that what we’ve seen over the past 12 hours.
The overall pattern though for the next five-plus days is cooler than average. The average highs heading towards the end of the week are in the 86-88-degree range. We may struggle to get there through the weekend.
Finally this morning: A waterspout (although the structure of this is really a tornado over water). This is down in Destin, Florida.
Very impressive!
Our feature photo comes from @BlueSpringsWx on Twitter.
Joe
